World Cup Content Marketing

We are delighted to host a guest blog post from Jon Mowat. Jon is MD at Hurricane Media and has produced successful video marketing campaigns for a host of clients, both large and small.

“Big international sporting events offer up huge opportunities for content marketers and advertisers as audiences of millions or even billions sit glued in front of their televisions, computers, tablets or even phones to cheer on their national side. And they don’t come much bigger than the World Cup. With the competition now in the nail biting knockout stages, it’s not difficult to see how the rules, tactics and strategies behind the beautiful game can throw up striking analogies into how businesses conduct winning content marketing campaigns.

Like great football teams, great marketing campaigns don’t achieve success without a lot of hard work, regardless of the kind of talent you have in your team. Behind every championship win, lies hours and hours of training, coaching and practice. Consistency in each of these areas will help build up the strength and skill of each individual player, but it’s ultimately teamwork, tactics and strategy that bring it all together. Just like bad passing, a weakly joined up content marketing campaign can let the entire side down.

Executing a successful content marketing campaign requires careful analysis of how you intend to exploit the competition across various areas by playing your key talent in the right areas. As in football, every team member needs to be clear what their role is for the strategy to come off.

The Manager

Behind every winning football team is a great manager. The manager leads the team and focuses on strategy and the game plan. Content marketing also requires a good manager at the helm to make sure that a clear message is being given, to the right people and in the right place. The content marketing manager can help to steer the campaign in the right direction and to ensure that all team members are keeping their eyes on the ball at all times. If necessary the manager can change strategy to adapt to the challenges as they present themselves.

Mid Field

Mid field players strive to set up goals for the strikers. Content marketers need to plan for success, understanding who their competitors are and how they can execute a game plan that ensures victory. Good midfield play involves a degree planning, foresight and intuition. In the same vein, good marketing requires identifying opportunities whenever they present themselves across a multitude of platforms and then exploiting them quickly and effectively. This requires a deep understanding of what the competition is doing, what they are offering and why their content marketing strategy is bringing them success (or failure).

Defence / Goalkeeper

Like winning football teams, successful content marketing also needs a good line of defence, whether that is ensuring the brand’s image is protected online assessing any content risks. If a certain piece of content doesn’t produce results it can end up draining resources unnecessarily or even produce a negative effect. In this case it’s your job to spot it quickly and go back on the offensive. Just as the goalkeeper is every football team’s last line of defence, every digital marketing strategy should always include an element of reputation management in case of negative comments or publicity.

Star Strikers

Great footballers look for opportune moments to strike and gain an edge on their opponents. Equally, every content marketer needs to seek out, and not overlook, new opportunities and challenges that could give them a shot at attaining their goals. A football manager should know their team’s strengths and weaknesses and play these to their advantage. The content equivalent to star strikers are content marketers who consistently produce brilliant viral content that can be reused again and again, across platforms.

Half Time and Post-Match Analysis

At the end of every football match, the manager and the team will take time to analyse how the game went. They use this opportunity to learn from for future matches. Even at half-time, managers are constantly assessing the game and may make adjustments to optimise performance and goal prospects for the second half. Content marketers similarly need to analyse how their content is performing, both part way through campaigns and at the end.

Understand what form of content works well for your business, be it video, newsletters, images or review pieces. Just as football should excite and invoke emotion and passion in its fans, good content marketing should have the same effect on those it is aimed at.”